Mere Mortals "Heart Burn Heart": During the first half of my tenure in L.A. I was occasionally called on to be an emergency fill-in bass player for various friends' bands. This was kind of funny, because I'd never really played bass before, aside from one disco-punk show in the '80s that I'm sure we'll get to next week. Bass is very easy to play adequately, nearly impossible to play well. Once you are good enough to learn what the instrument is supposed to do, that's when you get sad, because you probably aren't good enough to do it, and even if you were, you probably don't play with a good enough drummer, unless his name is "Coulter."

Anyway, the longest of these bass stints was for Dylan Callaghan's rock band Champion. Dylan somehow found a very special London, Germany vampire robot named Axel to play lead guitar. For a while there -- especially just after they finally fired me -- Champion was among the best bands in Hollywood. Then Dylan fired Axel and it all got pear-shaped, though as these things do it all turned out for the best. One way in which it turned out for the best is that Axel moved on to what he originally came to Hollywood for: Making his own special weird Brit-pop-death-love music, for the past few years in outfit called The Mere Mortals. Did you know the Mortals are going on tour with Frank Black? Now you do.